ONLY SEVEN OF our freemen rowers and one of the crew made it to safety. Of the oarsmen, two succumbed to their wounds the next day. One of those who died was Lomas.
I went to see him. The Spanish doctor on board the ship had administered an opiate to dull his pain but there was nothing else that could be done for him. He was lucid as he spoke his last words to me.
‘Take my goods.’ He indicated the bag of possessions that he’d gathered up when scrambling clear of our sinking galley. ‘The money I have is for my wife and my son. Will you go and give it to them?’
When I promised that I would do this, Lomas told me his family name and the location of the town where they lived. ‘Tell them’ – his voice wavered, whether from his condition or emotion I couldn’t say – ‘tell them, all I did, I did for them.’
I sat by him for an hour after he’d expired, feeling a deep loss resonating in me. Lomas had treated me as a father might a son, and his passing brought back memories of my parents. I rubbed my throat to ease the choking sensation I always felt when I thought of my father. I recalled the events in the magistrate’s compound and how Don Vicente Alonso had hit my father in the mouth. And I thought of my reaction when Panipat had done this to me – my knife was in my fist in an instant and I’d plunged it into his eye. How much worse was the fate I planned for the magistrate and his family! I intended to keep the promise I’d made to Lomas to seek out his wife and son, for I knew that I would return to Spain to deal with my own personal business of revenge.
When the cannon of the two Spanish ships had pounded the Turks into submission, they boarded the privateer to capture the men and raid their valuables and cargo before turning her adrift. Our galley was lying partially submerged, still caught up under the prow of the Turkish vessel. I went with the last man of our crew, the carpenter-cook, to collect anything of worth.
The body of Panipat lay where he’d fallen, half sitting with the shaft of his own knife protruding from his chest. I pulled it out and quickly stuck it in my own belt lest the carpenter-cook should see and comment on how the oars-master had died. We tied weights to the dead bodies before pushing them over the side to their graves in the sea. I had to prise Captain Cosimo’s stiff fingers from his jacket. I thought perhaps I should wrap him in it, for it was almost heavy enough to pull him under, but the carpenter-cook said quickly, ‘You take the jacket, boy. That’s legitimate spoils of war. I’ll have the rest of the captain’s stuff.’
I saw him go into the captain’s cubicle, break open the money box and help himself to the few coins inside.
He winked at me and laid his finger along the side of his nose. ‘We’ll both keep quiet as to what we’re about.’
I took this to mean that if I said nothing about him taking the money then he’d tell no one that I had originally been bought as a slave for a barrel of cheap wine. He collected his tools and cooking utensils and left. I lifted the map case and navigational aids. Burdened with these and the peacock jacket, I struggled back up the netting.
A tall man with blond hair stood at the ship’s rail. He leaned over the side to help me and eyed the navigational aids and the map case with interest. ‘I’m a mariner and explorer,’ he said. ‘I’d be interested in assessing your salvage. If they’re of any use to me I might be able to offer you a good price for them.’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘Our captain was training me to be a navigator and . . . and—’ To my embarrassment my voice cracked with emotion as I thought of Captain Cosimo, now lying dead at the bottom of the sea.
‘Ah.’ The tall man gave me an intelligent look. ‘You have a connection to these things that is worth more than their market value?’
I nodded.
‘What is your name?’ he enquired gently.
‘Saulo,’ I mumbled.
‘And your captain perished defending his men and his boat?’
Again I nodded, not sure that my voice was capable of an answer.
In a gesture of sympathy he placed his hand on my arm. ‘Saulo, I tell you, the bonds of loyalty that are forged between men of the sea are very intense.’
He waited until I composed myself and then said, ‘Let me at least look at your maps. When you’ve had that wound on your cheek attended to and rested after your ordeal, come and find me. My name is Christopher Columbus.’
The Spanish ships were on route to Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, territories situated outside the Mediterranean in the Ocean Sea, and recently brought under the rule of Castile. It was the intention of the conquering nation to plant sugarcane as the land there was deemed suitable for this crop. These ships carried plants and all manner of other things – furniture, foodstuffs, arms, garrison supplies, soldiers and colonists – for Spain wanted a land base off the coast of Africa to equal that set up by the Portuguese elsewhere.
Having thoroughly looted the Turkish vessel, the Spanish were now continuing on their journey. Christopher Columbus was standing on deck talking with the commander of the soldiers when I went to speak with him the next day. This was the man that Captain Cosimo had mentioned – the mariner and explorer who believed that there was a way around the back of maps.
‘My galley captain was from Genoa,’ I told Columbus. ‘He mentioned your name, saying you were an explorer and a skilful mariner. But then, he said the Genoese were the best sailors.’
Columbus nodded. ‘Genoa is a tiny state with no room for expansion. We have always looked to the sea for our livelihood, for trade and to travel and colonize. We are expert merchants and navigators.’ He said this last sentence with no trace of arrogance in his voice. It was as if he were stating a fact with which no honest person would disagree. ‘Your captain was unlucky to get caught by the Turkish ship.’
‘Not so much bad luck,’ I replied. And I told him of the captain’s afflicted sight and how it had cost him his life.
‘A captain has hard decisions to make but he shouldn’t risk the lives of his crew unnecessarily.’
‘Isn’t that what you will do if you try to sail to the other side of the Ocean Sea?’
‘No,’ said Columbus, ‘for I have toiled for years researching and planning every detail. There will the danger of the unknown, but what is a life worth without some adventure in it? And the sea beckons to me to sail out upon her breast and explore her mysteries.’
His sentiments chimed with my own, and I think he recognized that. We spent the rest of the voyage in each other’s company, and he told of his past expeditions and his dream of finding new countries. He asked me about myself, and I found myself telling him some of my life story. I left out the part about the manner of my father’s death and my desire to hunt down his killer.
Columbus looked at my maps and gave me a few coins in exchange for permission to take notes from some of them. But in the main they were of little use to him. Captain Cosimo’s maps were of the type known as portolan maps, Columbus explained, which show only the view of land as seen from the sea, with mountains and other features marked so that a captain sailing in inshore waters might work out his location. Some of the maps Columbus had were of a different kind, as if viewed from above. They showed the seas of the known world, its countries, cities and towns. The person who’d made them must pretend to be a great bird or a god who can hover high in the sky above the seas and the Earth and observe all that is below.
Columbus had spent time in Portugal, trying without success to persuade the authorities there to invest in his expedition. Now he was pursuing sponsorship with Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand and had more solid hopes of their support. He had been told that his application would be considered by a committee of learned men at the Spanish court. At present he was on a trip to explore the possibility of using the Spanish port at Las Palmas in Gran Canaria as a final stop before sailing west. He’d already sailed south along the African coast in the company of the Portuguese, hoping to reach the end of the continent and find a way round to reach India and the Far East. But so far all who’d done so had not reached the end of land to the south.
‘Africa is infinitely larger than any cartographer has projected so far,’ Columbus told me.
‘Is it worth exploring in itself?’ I asked him.
He told me stories of his journey along the west coast of the huge continent, where the colours of the waves flash the iridescent blue of a kingfisher and there are waterfalls so high that they look as though they fall from the door of Heaven. I was both excited and afraid to hear of lands where magical horned beasts roamed and it was rumoured that men ate other men for food. Natives would run onto the beach when they saw a ship passing to wave spears in the air and chant in previously unheard languages. Sometimes they put out in long boats to trade foodstuffs and fresh water. There Columbus had eaten fruit and plants unseen in Europe. My own senses awakened as he spoke. He was a magnificent storyteller. He’d read the diaries of Marco Polo and other explorers and recounted their tales of finding hoards of gemstones, pearls and amber, mingling these with his own experiences. In the evenings I sat on deck with the sails spread full-bellied above me, listening to him and watching his animated face, eyes shining in the light from the ship’s lantern; and I ached to go off exploring.
But Columbus’s main interest lay to the west, where the rolling ocean stretched to infinity. Beyond it lay the furthest ends of the Earth, and who knew what was waiting to be discovered in those extremities? I’d heard they were peopled by demons who’d escaped the realms of the underworld by using their enormous hooked claws to climb up into our world. They roamed these faraway waters in the company of grotesque sea creatures and fish of gigantic proportions with jagged teeth and stinging tentacles. These were capable of squirting poison into a man’s eyes, so that his face and body turned black within minutes and he died screaming in agony. Most of the crew believed that it was madness to venture too far in that direction. Despite their taunts and warnings, Christopher Columbus was determined to navigate his way through these perils.
When questioned or challenged, he would tilt his head, and with an expression that was a mixture of zeal and determination, declare: ‘The world is round. I can – no, I will find the way to the east by sailing west.’